Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday April 03, 2013 @01:20PM
from the listen-up dept.

Last week you had a chance to ask co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold, questions before his live Q&A. Below you'll find his answers to a few of the highest rated. Make sure you come back today from 12-12:30pm PDT (3-3:30pm ET, 19:00-19:30 GMT) to ask him whatever you like in real time. We'll have a new story for your questions at that time.

What's it like being "evil"?
by Sarten-X

From working at big bad Microsoft to founding a patent-focused lab, you seem like an ideal person to answer a question I've had for a while: What's it like working in companies that are constantly under attack from those who try to claim a moral high ground?

To clarify, I don't mean to imply that you are evil, or that Microsoft or Intellectual Ventures are harming society, but rather I recognize that such accusations are common, regardless of truth. On the one hand, I don't assume that the FOSS fanatics (including myself at times) are always right about how bad Microsoft is, or the free-IP crowd is always right about how patents are crushing us, but at the same time I find it hard to believe they're always wrong, too. I'm curious what kind of moral dilemmas you encounter in this respect, if any, and what insight you might be able to provide as to life on the receiving end of the activists' assaults.

NATHAN: First, thanks for implying I may not be evil. I appreciate it. Most people think I’m crazy for entering this lion’s den. But look, if I wanted to be popular, I would have gone to a chef’s convention!

The fact is that I have more in common with you guys on /. than you might think. This is a community populated by engineers and technologists, not Luddites. You love great ideas. So do I. We may differ on the *economic value* of those great ideas, but I think this group debates innovation with the same passion and rigor that I do.

Here is an analogy – which isn’t perfect, but I think it captures the flavor of your question – it’s like being American and hearing international criticism.

When you turn on the news it’s certainly not uncommon to see demonstrations by people burning flags and declaring their hatred of America. North Korea is the most recent example, but it happens all the time. Analogous demonstrations occur all over the world – even in prosperous western democracies like France.

While people calling for your death is concerning, it doesn’t automatically follow that I should take it personally as an American citizen. More often than not these are manifestations of ideological struggles. It is more about what America symbolizes than anything. Most of their angst is directed against the political idea of “America” and what it means in the world rather than tangible acts by individual Americans.

At Microsoft, we were on the receiving end of this as well. Obviously I was aware of that, but it was hard to take all of the hatred seriously for the same reason that it is hard to take all of the criticism of America personally.

If you’re a “superpower,” a market leader or disruptive agent of change you’re going to catch some shit. Some of it may be due to legitimate complaints about certain things said “superpower” does. Microsoft wasn’t (and isn’t) infallible. Nor is the US government. But a lot of it is going to be reacting to the abstract idea that Microsoft is a “superpower”.

Even if you disagree about the source of the criticism, your question was how does it *feel* to be in a company that is hated. Well, I think that the feeling is very similar to how I feel about being an American when my country is hated. I was (and remain) very proud of what I did at Microsoft. The other people there were great, and on the whole did great work.

The same goes for Intellectual Ventures. When the critical remarks become too shrill or over the top, it is just hard to take it seriously as anything approaching constructive criticism.

Also, I’m willing to take on that personal risk of negative attention and stay on the pointy edge of these debates because I know very well that what I’m doing is risky. A) I’m creating a capital market for invention that has never existed before and B) I’m investing in inventions! Inventions take decades to bear fruit and let’s face it, history says they are more likely to fail than they are to succeed. But that’s the thrill of it. Gambling on those great ideas and watching which ones win. Kymeta is one I’m particularly proud of. They just signed up their first customer.

Is the Patent System broken?
by eldavojohn

Many readers of Slashdot (myself included) feel that the patent system is broken. I haven't heard any criticisms from you or Intellectual Ventures so I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about the patent system. Is it fundamentally broken? Only a little broken? Working flawlessly and exactly as it was intended to work??

NATHAN: No, I do not think the U.S. patent system is broken.

That is taken for granted by a lot of people, but frankly there isn’t any evidence that on a wide spread basis that it is “broken”.

People may “feel” that way (as you put it) but in my view that is mostly based on a couple of things:

1. Recounting anecdotes about a specific bad patent. There are lots of stories about patents that never should have been granted. These are used to imply that all patents are bad. Well, of course there are a few patents that should not have been granted, but isolated anecdotes don’t indict a whole system. Indeed you can always find an anecdote to support virtually any proposition. Statistics matter, and you can’t use rare cases to draw sweeping conclusions.

2. Plus, many of the stories about bad patents don’t actually tell the real story. While there are some bad patents out there, it turns out that many of the specific cases that are used to illustrate how “broken” the patent system are not told correctly. Some stories turn out to be factually wrong; some are fabricated entirely. In other cases the story that is told is true as far as it is told, but the whole story isn’t out there. A complete understanding of the story often leads to a different conclusion.

3. Not knowing how to read a patent. Say you aren’t a programmer and you try to read some code – say in C – you could probably sort of understand some of it because “if”, “else” and similar constructs can be interpreted a bit using their English language meaning. But you can’t really understand the code that way. Well, a patent is similar. The language used to write patent claims is basically English, but the specific interpretation is couched in patent law. When a technical person who isn’t familiar with patent law reads a patent they often come away with a misunderstanding of what the patent actually covers – usually thinking that it is much broader than it actually is. This gives the impression that the patent covers things it doesn’t, and then leads to the impression that it is overly broad, obvious and shouldn’t have been granted.

4. An axe to grind. Many of the people claiming that the patent system is broken feel that way because they have an agenda. As one example, many large technology companies have taken other people’s inventions and used them to make billions. They don’t want to pay. So they have an agenda to attack the patent system – that is both easier and cheaper than to pay what they owe. Open source advocates have a similar agenda – they fear that their favorite open source project may be threatened by patents. Once you have an agenda to minimize or marginalize patents, it is easy to see the system as broken.

5. Revisionist history. One of the funny arguments that people make is that patents are supposed to be there to help product-making companies. The U.S. Constitution predated the Industrial Revolution and the creation of the US patent system in 1787 was designed to protect the inventor, not corporations (or practicing entities as the IP industry is fond of calling them now). The idea of patents is to give incentive to inventors.

6. Ideology. Some people have an intellectual or ideological problem with intangible intellectual property. For example, some people hate copyright. Well, there are some that hate patents also.

These are just some of the pitfalls in the “patents are broken” argument as it is typically presented.

Is the system perfect? No, it isn’t.

The patent office has had funding issues. In recent years Congress has raided the patent office fees and taken them to spend elsewhere rather than let them be used to improve the patent office.

In some industries – say biotech and pharmaceuticals – the system works reasonably well in its main point, which is to give economic motivation to people inventing new things. No pharma company would invest in a new drug, especially the huge cost of clinical trials, without having some exclusivity.

Millions of people are alive today because of the patented medical innovations created by this incentive system. While it may not be perfect (what is?), it is has been remarkably successful. The majority of people reading this post have had their lives or those of a close family member saved by a patented medicine.

Within computer technology, the system of granting patents works reasonably well. The system of getting an inventor paid isn’t that great because historically speaking giant technology companies steal a lot of inventions and don’t pay for them.

This is changing somewhat because big tech companies like Microsoft and Apple are now enforcing patents as a part of their business strategy, but there is still a strong segment of the tech industry that doesn’t want to pay inventors.

The ideal system would be a meritocracy where inventors would get paid for their work. That is what makes the incentive system work. Failing to pay hurts the effectiveness of the system overall.

Re:what are the differences from the past?
by alexander_686

Those patents were for making things and scope was well defined. First, the newer set of patents tend to be for ideas and business processes and are not well defined and tend to be broad. I forget the details, but somebody has a patent for transmitting images over a network which in theory covers almost every moving image on the internet – and this was not for a specific method, code, or algorithm of doing so – just the general idea. Second, devices are getting more complex and interrelated. A cell phone needs patents covering data transmission, networking protocols, digital camera, OS, etc. Throw on top of that design patents (look and feel) and it is a real mess.

NATHAN: This may be a bit controversial, but the reality is that the patent system was the world’s first experiment with open source.

The idea of the patent system is that after a period of time (typically 20 years) the invention passes into the public domain. The inventor must share enough information in the patent to allow somebody to recreate the invention. Indeed, the word “patent” originates from the Latin “patere,” which means "to lay open".

The 20 year exclusive period acts as an economic incentive for the inventor to share the information. The incentive is necessary because otherwise an inventor could keep an invention secret. The incentive is reasonable because invention is expensive and risky. It often takes a lot of failure before you get it right. Patents are a way to simultaneously protect and distribute the ideas for usage, assuming the original inventor gets compensated for their work. There’s the rub. What’s so wrong with making sure the inventor gets compensated for their hard work? Why is that such a problem?

We have plenty of tech companies now that offer free massages, lunch, dry-cleaning and a myriad of other things to their employees. Have you seen their margins? Do you really think they can’t afford to pay an inventor for their work? I’m not talking about huge percentages either. Licensing patents represent only a *fraction* of a product’s overall costs, when you tally up development, materials, production, marketing, distribution, and so forth. But the fact of the matter remains, these companies are standing on the shoulders of those who came before without proper compensation even though their work is being used in a product by thousands or even millions of people.

Calling patents a system similar to open source may seem odd, because most current open source software has no period of exclusivity. Open source software as typically practiced is a private system that people willingly enter into. If they don’t want to ask for benefit other that participation and recognition that is great – but their CHOICE to do what they want with their creative output is fully consistent with copyright law.

In fact, that is a very instructive case. Not so long ago many people now associated with the open source software community hated copyright. They wanted to copy code, and thought it was terrible that software could be protected by copyright. Richard Stallman in particular argued strongly against copyright.

Then, a funny thing happened. People in the open source community figured out that by cleverly adopting a copyright license they could actually protect the openness of the code. Suddenly copyright went from something that was hated to something that is an essential part of the legal framework that lets open source work.

I believe that something like that is possible with patents too. At the moment many people in the open source movement disapprove of patents. I believe that this is an echo of the anti-copyright sentiment. But ultimately I think that it is just as misguided – that far from being a problem for open source, patents could make a net-positive contribution.

Can you present examples of how IV has helped individual inventors to get revenue from their inventions?
by patmandu

Please include specific names, specific inventions, approximate revenue seen by the inventor, and current status of the invention-related product(s) and ownership of the patent(s).

NATHAN: Intellectual Ventures has paid out $400 million to individual inventors to date, where our business model involves purchasing either A) a patent application to prosecute (note that “prosecuting” a patent means applying to the patent office to get a patent granted – people think that it means litigation, but that’s not the way the term is used); or B) a patent outright.

Here are some examples:

Rebecca Taylor, an inventor from Austin, received her first patent for an embedded software translation machine that streamlines data sharing and eliminates code bloat to create efficient communication between devices. When a deal fell through to sell this invention to another big tech company, a chance meeting with me brought her to Intellectual Ventures instead. She sold her patent to us and fund both her son’s college education and her own graduate studies in public policy. Taylor is currently serving as senior adviser for innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Science & Technology Adviser to the Secretary.

Lev Bolotin, an inventor & entrepreneur based near us in Seattle, and Matthew Whitten, an inventor and software engineer from Maine, both chose Intellectual Ventures because it was the only company that could both monetize and build up a significant IP portfolio for their startups. Both have used the cash from these deals to finance their ventures. In Bolotin’s words: “Intellectual Ventures proved to the business community that IP can be trusted as an asset. It can be bought and sold. IV has established a value reference for IP—and that is priceless!”

I’ll also take this opportunity to point out that the most important inventors we work with are Intellectual Ventures employees. We have nuclear physicists, rocket scientists, neurosurgeons, chemists, and mathematicians roaming our halls. Many have hundreds of patents worldwide to their name. Many more have PhDs.

Results
by Matt_Bennett

What products have Intellectual Ventures developed and brought to market?

NATHAN: Intellectual Ventures is focused on invention, not making products itself.

In terms of new inventions filed before the patent office in 2012, we were the 4th company in the US, and 16th worldwide.

Some of those inventions are suitable for starting new companies. We have created two spin out companies so far, Kymeta, which makes a radical new metamaterial antenna that will revolutionize mobile bandwidth, and TerraPower, which is commercializing our invention of a new type of clean and safe nuclear power plant.

Most inventions, even great ones, are not suitable for founding a company. In those cases we license the patents, typically on a non-exclusive basis, to dozens of companies. Most market-leading technology products contain inventions that Intellectual Ventures has licensed.

Some people don’t like the idea of invention without making products. I don’t really see why. By specializing in invention, and investing in invention, we can be better at it than companies that focus on the commercialization.

Another weird aspect of this is that very few US-based companies actually *make* products. Apple doesn’t make iPhones. They design them, and then they contract for others to make them. The actual MAKING is done by companies in China.

As another example, a venture capital company does not make products. Neither does a mutual fund company. They simply invest in others.

So, if a mutual fund like Fidelity owns stock in Apple, Intel, Microsoft and others, people don’t seem to have a problem with it. Their investment enables those companies to make their products (or contract for them to be made).

If a venture firm like Benchmark or Kleiner Perkins invests in tech startups, nobody has a problem. Again, the investment enables them.

Well, we license patents to Apple, Intel, Microsoft and others. That enables them too. And we start new companies, enabling them to make products.

Relationship to Oasis Research and Lodsys?
by eldavojohn

One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?

NATHAN: We routinely sell our patents either individually or in full portfolios. These are called divestitures in the asset management world and we consider our patent holdings our assets. We sold patents to Oasis and Lodsys.

At the time we bought those assets, anybody else could have bought them. At the time we sold them, the same thing is true. Before selling them we had licensed a number of companies to these patents. Those companies, or others, could have bought the patents to use them strategically, or simply to hold them as a service to their developer communities.

It happens that Lodsys and Oasis bought them, and they chose to pursue patent assertion, and also litigation. I have no control over what they would do with the patents.

In a perfect world we could make money without any side effects, and the buyers of our patents would not cause as much controversy as those sales have done. Here on planet earth things are far from perfect, and that is not what happened. I re-learned an important management lesson from This American Life: I cannot control every outcome, but I certainly take responsibility for it.

On one hand, I don’t feel a bit ashamed that Intellectual Ventures could make a return on those investments for us and for our investors. We bought the assets originally, we licensed them, and then we sold them. That is how the market works.

On the other hand, I feel that even though I don’t control them, I do take responsibility for the backlash it created. As CEO, it’s my job to determine whether that’s the best business practice moving forward. We will most definitely continue to divest assets since there is market demand, but the company will be looking more closely at the *how* we do it and under what terms.

Mosquitoes
by Skewray

The Photonic Fence project was proposed with much fanfare about six years ago, to rid Africa is disease-carrying mosquitoes. Rumor has it that the Gates Foundation has cut funding. The project appears to have developed nothing of practical use, although the project leaders responsible appear to still be in control. Is there going to be a serious forensic analysis of how the project went south?

NATHAN: Actually, we have many anti-malaria projects, and the photonic fence is just one of them. We have been successful in proving the basic concept – that you can identify, track and kill a mosquito using lasers – in a lab setting, so now we’re looking at the best way to apply the technology.

There are some significant hurdles to deploying something like this in developing countries, so it might end up that the technology is used more for research purposes to understand mosquitoes.

We’re still figuring that out and talking with potential commercial partners, but one of the important things about the photonic fence is that we got people thinking and talking about malaria prevention in new ways. That’s one of the values of inventing. It’s an inherently risky activity, but even inventions that don’t ultimately work out as you expected challenge people to think about problems in new ways and open up new possibilities to explore.

It is important to remember that not every project will work out! We are still working on the photonic fence, but it may be an idea that is flawed, or maybe it will work in the future but it is ahead of its time. When you invent you take that sort of risk.

Philanthropic work
by jaiyen

As you've already made your fortune, I'm curious as to why you choose to get involved in controversial patent licensing, rather than, say, Bill Gates style philanthropic work?

NATHAN: First, I think that what we are doing at Intellectual Ventures is a very important and beneficial thing for the world. If we can establish what I like to call the “invention capital” market and get more funding to inventors, it would have an impact similar to the creation of the venture capital market.

Bill is one of my closest friends, a mentor and also an investor in many of our projects. I admire the work he is doing with his Foundation. So much so in fact, that we decided to partner a few years ago to tackle some of the biggest problems Bill and Melinda want to solve. So we have a project called Global Good that focuses specifically on the inventions required to save lives in developing countries.

Frankly we think we serve the developing world better by focusing our expertise than via traditional philanthropy. So far, we have done work on the photonic fence (which I described in my response to Skewray), cold-chain storage technology for vaccines and modeling software for infectious diseases.

Traveling wave reactors vs (and) thorium
by DPajak

Mr. Myhrvold: I know you are sold on traveling wave reactors, and I hope they prove their worth. But, I was wondering; have you given up on thorium-powered reactors? I saw an article in Forbes not too long ago where the author actually argued that, because it would turn thorium from an expensive-to-dispose-of-waste-product into a valuable resource, building thorium reactors could make electronics cheaper. This is because thorium is usually present in rare earth metals used for electronics and often have to be removed prior to processing. Have you considered running a similar kind of reactor to traveling wave on a thorium-uranium mixture (that would also deal with the problem of thorium being "fertile" as opposed to "fissile")? If thorium-powered reactors reduced the price of manufacturing electric vehicles, you would have the added benefit of cheaper EVs. This would not only reduce carbon emissions even further and faster; it would put more demand on the electricity grid as more people switched over to EVs from internal combustion powered cars. This would mean we w’ould need even more electricity generation and less fossil fuels; we could build more of both the thorium reactors like LFTRs and traveling wave reactors to meet the demand. Finally, as everyone knows, thorium is far more common in the earth's crust than uranium. It seems to me using thorium-powered reactors to compliment your reactor concepts like traveling wave reactors would speed up the process you are trying to create, namely, the decarbonization of first the United States first, and then the world. I see no reason why both uranium and thorium reactors are not necessary. What are your thoughts? And is Intellectual Ventures pursuing R&D on thorium, as well?

NATHAN: Thoughtful question, thank you. We did explore thorium in the conceptual designs for the travelling wave reactor at TerraPower.

The neutronics of a thorium reaction are not quite the same as for uranium, and as a result it is a lot more challenging to engineer a thorium based system. That said, we have invented what we believe is the best thorium based reactor out there, and would love to pursue it at some point.

The nuclear power community is quite conservative – and rightly so – so we have tried to make the best design we can get into service quickly, and that is a uranium based system.

Also, while Th is much more common than U in the crust as you point out, our TerraPower reactor can use depleted uranium, and even use spent fuel rods as a source. As a result there is PLENTY of fuel for our reactors for the foreseeable future. Eventually, we would like to see both U and Th systems out there.

Sense of Accomplishment
by PaddyM

As a software engineer, I produce solutions to different problems every day which are then implemented and used by people. If my resulting software was not used by anyone, I would not gain much fulfillment in my work. Considering that much of the work done by Intellectual Ventures does not result in actual tangible products, do you still get a sense of accomplishment? Are you prouder of the ideas which actually get implemented? Or are you satisfied with the ideas that are developed, independent of whether they result in viable products or not?

NATHAN: Excellent question. I absolutely do get a sense of accomplishment. But it’s a more delayed sense of accomplishment. This brings up a really important distinction I think that needs to be made. I firmly believe that ideas are ends in and of themselves. Sure they might go on to live their lives as part of a product down the road, but even if it doesn’t make it into a product it is not deprived of its intrinsic value. No idea = no product in the first place. Intellectual exploration doesn’t require the validation a product does.

While there are many VCs out there expecting returns in just a handful of years, we work on a much longer timeline. So the stepping stones and ideas that might not seem relevant or directly applicable now may be 20 years from now—we aren’t entirely sure about that. I have to be satisfied with that. Even though an idea doesn’t make it into a product this year or next isn’t automatic failure to me.

As an inventor and as someone in the business of ideas, you have to be satisfied with failure. And in a weird way, that has to be part of your sense of accomplishment. Knowing that each failure means you’re one step closer to getting it right.

Also, there’s great satisfaction in taking the journey in the first place. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Take the scientific research community for example. A lot of the glory in research comes from being first to get your idea published in a peer-reviewed journal. It’s a race. And ideas are the same way. I want to win, but I don’t always. But it’s good to at least be part of the race.

Science of cooking food
by peter303

One of the TV news magazines showed some of the things you learned about new, scientific ways of cooking food. What was the most amazing thing, in your opinion, that you discovered?

NATHAN: I’ll be honest, I can’t pick one thing - I learned so much as I worked on Modernist Cuisine. But I’m betting this crowd will like these two:

1. Try decanting your wine with an ordinary kitchen blender. It’s pretty amazing. I just pour the wine in, frappé away at the highest power setting for 30 to 60 seconds, and then allow the froth to subside (which happens quickly) before serving. We call it “hyperdecanting.” One reason to do is to improve the taste of a young red wine, but the other big benefit is the looks on people’s faces! People are so conservative about wine – they treat it with this odd reverence – that when you put in a blender a lot of folks just freak out.

2. Perhaps you have an ultrasonic bath lying around? (Finally! I’ve been waiting for an audience that might actually apply to!) Try using it to make French fries. Unbelievably delicious.

One inventor question:
by Tablizer

where's our f@!&# flying cars?

NATHAN: Seriously. Where the f@!&# are they? I want one too!

The serious answer to the question is that flying is really hard to do.
Look at driving a car. It is easy enough that everybody does it, but also hard enough that we kill ~30,000 people a year on the road. We take this for granted, but it is a huge problem.

Flying is much safer because the FAA went nuts on safety, and on qualifications. Flying in a commercial jet is much safer than driving your own car. In a perfect world, you would spend some of the effort made to make airplanes safe to make our cars safer.

FAA regulations make it virtually impossible for anybody to make a flying car that is a realistic consumer product. It’s also hard to do intrinsically – flight is very challenging.

Even though flying is much safer, it is still hard to do – most accidents are pilot error. The same thing is true for cars. The problem is leaving the human in the loop.

I am very excited by self-driving cars pioneered by the DARPA Grand Challenge, and now experimented with by Google and others.

The next big step in safer cars is going to be making them drive themselves.

There's always two sides to a story. To be honest, everything mr. Myhrvold says sounds very reasonable. Of course everybody is entitled to his own opinion, but I think he's more qualified to speak on the right and wrong of patents than most. I learned something here... and that's worth a big thank you.

Myhrvold talks about how creating a market for invention give incentives and rewards to inventors. But it also creates a barrier to entry: An inventor needs the resources to participate in the market, to buy patent portfolios and to defend them in court. How many innovators are deterred and how much innovation do we lose?

Also, I'm not sure how necessary that market is, or in what cases it's valuable. Many of the greatest innovations were FOSS, such as the Internet, the World Wide Web (and associated technologies), FTP, SMTP, etc (not to mention almost all scientific research and human knowledge!). In fact, they were successful in part because they were free, lowering the barrier to entry for others to build on top of them, such as Microsoft.

Why did we ask him this question? We knew that we'd get an answer like this, and it's because he directly profits from the broken patent system and has a vested interest in perpetuating it.

At least he admits that they directly back patent trolls.

It happens that Lodsys and Oasis bought them, and they chose to pursue patent assertion, and also litigation. I have no control over what they would do with the patents.

You insult our intelligence, Mr. Myhrvold. They didn't just happen to be the ones to buy them. I fully expect that with a real investigation, one that could get behind the hand-waving of corporate accounting, it could be shown that IV has a vested interest in the outcome of the patent suits those companies pursued. That's why you put them under shell companies anyway: if the suit is lost due to non-infringement or invalidation, the only thing lost is the lawyer's time and the singular patent. No further assets are at risk. But if you win, then you receive a portion of the award. Undoubtedly a "debt" carried by the troll and written off as a loss if it fails.

the reality is that the patent system was the world’s first experiment with open source.

So what you're saying is now we have actual open source, therefore patents are no longer necessary? We're shedding the insistence on hoarding knowledge, and moving into a new era?

Nonsense. You're just trying to twist your preferred means of extracting money from others to try and conjure up support for it.

The same goes for Intellectual Ventures. When the critical remarks become too shrill or over the top, it is just hard to take it seriously as anything approaching constructive criticism.

I suppose that depends at what point you consider such remarks to be "shrill or over the top." For you I imagine that's the moment someone suggests that the patent system is broken, or that software shouldn't be patentable. That is to say, the moment anyone suggests that your business model is unsustainable and dangerous to the economy.

Not knowing how to read a patent.

If I, as a software developer, cannot read a software patent and understand how it is implemented then the patent has no value. None. Patents are meant to be used by engineers to reproduce the patented mechanism. This is also why patents are absolute shit for anything other than electromechanical devices.

Say you aren’t a programmer and you try to read some code – say in C – you could probably sort of understand some of it because “if”, “else” and similar constructs can be interpreted a bit using their English language meaning. But you can’t really understand the code that way. Well, a patent is similar.

No it's not. It means a patent is garbage that's been obscured and made useless for the purpose of CONVEYING KNOWLEDGE.

Of course, the interpretation that said patents are overly broad tends to be correct. Software patents, in particular, are deliberately written to be overly broad so that they can be used against as many people as possible. To instill as much fear across as many companies and industries as they can in the hopes that enough people pay the licensing fees before someone stands up and fights it in court.

Maybe you know, if a normal pantent has a drawing of an apparatus and shows how it functions, which is the trade patents make a time limited monopoly for sharing information why don't software patents ever seem to include code?

Would that not be the proper way of things?Here is the code I used to do this thing, I get to use it for 20 years. If you find another way to do the same thing why should my method have any hold over yours?

I can invent a screwdriver and you can invent another neither prevents the othe

Because when you get down to it, "software patents" are actually "method patents," where they patent a method of doing something. This is why Bilski was so big because that attacked "business method patents," another realm full of horribly obscure patents that require a lawyer to read and have little value other than to attack competitors.

What you describe might be valuable, at least as a resource, but then I could work around it by writing different code, possibly in a different language, that gives me the same output for a given input. The value in knowledge retention there is, as I noted, solved by releasing your code as open source.

Now I am more confused. If my method and your method are different, why would your patent cover mine?

I patent the method of finding even or odd by X%2 and you patent the method of doing the same by X/2 and having X be an int.

I thought the whole idea of patents includes the ability to solve the same problem in a different way. You can't pantent all hammers, just the one you designed. So I can avoid your claims and make my own hammer.

That's why they work in vagaries, and mostly try throwing shit at the wall until they see what sticks. The answer is that it may not cover it, but you'll have to engage in a protracted court battle and rely on a jury (thus destroying Myrhvold's argument that mere mortals cannot possibly understand claims meant to be read by lawyers) to determine one way or another.

No it's not. It means a patent is garbage that's been obscured and made useless for the purpose of CONVEYING KNOWLEDGE.

If I can clarify, patents have two parts. The first is a description written so that you can understand it. The second part has the claims, which are the incomprehensible part. If you want to implement the idea, you only need to understand the first part. The claims explain what aspects of the invention are covered by the patent. The claims are what you are interested in if you want to have your day in court. If all you want is to implement the idea in your back yard, read the first part and have at it.

If the claims are incomprehensible then the patent has no value. How many times has it been stated that reading the summary doesn't actually tell you what the patent is up to?

Summaries are often vague, and from some companies the summary doesn't change between patents though the claims do. That's broken.

... you could always read the rest of the patent, you know. Given a hundred or hundred-fifty page document, why should it be a requirement that you have to extract all of the knowledge in it merely by reading the last two or three pages, or a few paragraphs up at the front?

you could always read the rest of the patent, you know. Given a hundred or hundred-fifty page document, why should it be a requirement that you have to extract all of the knowledge in it merely by reading the last two or three pages, or a few paragraphs up at the front?

Are there patents that reach 150 pages? How is a patent clerk supposed to determine that the invention covered in that tome is worthy of a patent?

How is a corporate lawyer supposed to discern whether or not they infringe, or an engineer to de

Where is the information? Without it simply conveying information it seems to miss the whole point.

Nope. The Claims are there to define the metes and bounds of the patent owner's property. The rest of the application is there for conveying information about the invention.

Think of it this way - you own a house and some land. The deed is recorded at the registry of deeds, and includes very precise language defining the metes and bounds of your land - so many feet and inches this direction, turning to this angle, so many feet and inches that way, etc. However, that deed doesn't tell you that your house is

I think pseudocode would be fine, if it covered every method of doing that thing that the patent covered.

I don't think anyone should get protection beyond the implementation they showed the world. Else the classic knowledge for time limited monopoly trade is totally broken. Without showing the actual work the patent might as well just say we pantent doing X and give no explanation at all.

If I, as a software developer, cannot read a software patent and understand how it is implemented then the patent has no value . None. Patents are meant to be used by engineers to reproduce the patented mechanism.

I hate to be on the side of IV, but that is not at all true. The problem is that a patent is (in a way) like a legal document - you assumed the purpose is that any programmer should be able to implement it. The purpose is to defend the intellectual property rights of the patent holder against challenges in a court. It would have all the bits and pieces of the complete algorithm/device description, plus a lot of fluff thrown in that makes it hard to read. I'm not sure if software patents must include pseudo

I've been trying to understand people like Nathan for a while. I think his nature is to see everything as a competition and the score is usually profit or "commercial success". Why is that still the means of scorekeeping for someone who has more than they can spend? It must be too difficult for him to change scorekeeping currency. Seems like such an empty existence. But if he changed objectives, he might not be "successful" with the new ones, so that might be an unaccep

You focus on how IV has extracted money from others. The fact is, all companies extract money from certain groups (their customers). And it's equally true that all companies disburse money to certain groups (their employees, their suppliers, their owners/shareholders, and entities who have levied taxes against the company).

As long as both parties enter into these transactions voluntarily, this is a good thing. (When two parties enter into a transaction

Here is what the National Physical Laboratory (UK) has to say on the subject:

Another convention sometimes used is that, since 12 noon is by definition neither ante meridiem (before noon) nor post meridiem (after noon), then 12 a.m. refers to midnight at the start of the specified day (00:00) and 12 p.m. to midnight at the end of that day (24:00). Given this ambiguity, the terms 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. should

What you are referring to is very interesting, but is referring only to the "instants" of noon and midnight.

Technically, it is correct to label 00:00:01 as "AM," yes?

So, I could also label 00:00:00.1 AM, yes?

How about 00:00:00.001 AM?

You can probably see where this is going. By the time the clock has changed to 12:00 (or 00:00, or 24:00) some amount, albeit a very small amount perhaps, of time has elapsed. Yes, even if the hands or digits don't show that resolution, the time has elapsed. So the

the inventor, per se. It was designed to get IP into the public domain instead of being kept as a trade secret. In order to do so, it was agreed to reward inventors for a limited period of time. This gave incentive to distribute IP instead of hiding it in perpetuity under the cloak of trade secrets.

Here is an analogy â" which isnâ(TM)t perfect, but I think it captures the flavor of your question â" itâ(TM)s like being American and hearing international criticism.

Nathan's analogy is just about spot-on, though not (I suspect) for the reasons he thinks.

More often than not these are manifestations of ideological struggles. It is more about what America symbolizes than anything. Most of their angst is directed against the political idea of âoeAmericaâ and what it means in the world rather than tangible acts by individual Americans.

Herp derp, people criticize America because they're ideological zealots who hate the Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity that we stand for. Never because they've seen their own country, friends, and family suffer from American bombs, American torture, American rape, American violent replacement of democracies with brutal dictators --- good ol' peace-and-freedom loving America would never do such things.

Nathan shows the same ignorant imperial hubris about Microsoft: anyone who hates them must be some Luddite who hates progress and success. Nothing to do with "embrace, extend, extinguish," antitrust trials, seeing real innovators being driven out of the market by third-rate Microsoft products. Nope, Microsoft is the bastion of software goodness in the world, so to hate them is to hate progress itself. Herp derp.

When a technical person who isn’t familiar with patent law reads a patent they often come away with a misunderstanding of what the patent actually covers – usually thinking that it is much broader than it actually is. This gives the impression that the patent covers things it doesn’t, and then leads to the impression that it is overly broad, obvious and shouldn’t have been granted.

My impression that a patent is overly broad does not stem from a misunderstanding from reading the pat

No pharma company would invest in a new drug, especially the huge cost of clinical trials, without having some exclusivity.

Lots of problems with this statement. He cleverly said "invest" instead of "invent". Pharma companies don't do much actual discovery or invention, they offload that expense on to the public, which pays for it through funding of universities and their research.

As for the "huge cost" of clinical trials, I expect that is all tax deductible. Other industries also have huge expenses. I can't think of any reason why pharma's expenses should get special treatment. And granting them exclusiv

Lots of problems with this statement. He cleverly said "invest" instead of "invent". Pharma companies don't do much actual discovery or invention, they offload that expense on to the public, which pays for it through funding of universities and their research.

Universities do more basic research. They'll happily determine that some drug kills certain forms of cancer in some lab animal, for example, but that's not what gets sold. The drug may not work on humans. It may have horrible side effects. It lik

There are a lot of problems with all this. Why does the drug company get a monopoly? Why not the university? Or the research team? In cases where the drug comes from a substance that native peoples used for centuries, shouldn't they get something too? At the least, they shouldn't suddenly be denied the use of their own cure!

Another fundamental problem with patents is that they don't account for parallel work. Particularly in the West, there's too much admiration for the mythical loner genius. It's

The fact is that I have more in common with you guys on/. than you might think. This is a community populated by engineers and technologists, not Luddites. You love great ideas. So do I. We may differ on the *economic value* of those great ideas, but I think this group debates innovation with the same passion and rigor that I do.